Doc’n Roll Film Festival returns to Dublin with Coil and Meredith Monk films

The third Dublin edition of Doc’n Roll Film Festival runs from 18 October to 20 November 2025 at the Lighthouse Cinema. The programme focuses on artists working on the edges of music and culture, with Irish premieres of films on Butthole Surfers, Coil, Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols, and Meredith Monk.

The festival, launched in London in 2014, has since expanded with editions in Dublin, Amsterdam, New York and San Francisco. It was founded as an independent platform for films concerned with music subcultures, outsider voices and marginal creative communities. Doc’n Roll Films, the agency behind the event, was established in 2013 and is female-led.

Programme

18 October – Butthole Surfers: The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt

Directed by Tom Stern, USA, 2025, 106 minutes
A full-length account of the San Antonio band founded by Gibby Haynes and Paul Leary in 1981. The film reconstructs the group’s rise from university outsiders to a band associated with extreme live shows, multimedia projections and an unstable line-up that at various points included drummers Teresa Nervosa and King Coffey, and bassist Jeff Pinkus. Archival material revisits their links to the US underground, confrontations with major labels, and their brief commercial peak in the 1990s.

19 October – A Way to Die: The Short Films of Coil

Directed by Xavier Laradji and Maxime Lachaud, France, 2024, 100 minutes
A restoration of short films made by Peter Christopherson and John Balance, founders of the English experimental group Coil. Shot on 8mm and 16mm, the works combine homoerotic imagery, occult references and body modification, connected to the post-industrial culture of 1980s Britain. The material is accompanied by previously unreleased Coil music and places their visual output alongside the wider experimental cinema of the period.

20 October – I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol: Glen Matlock

Directed by Nick Mead and Andre Relis, USA, 2025, 90 minutes
Centred on the recollections of Glen Matlock, original bassist of the Sex Pistols, the film covers his role in co-writing most of the tracks on Never Mind the Bollocks (1977). Matlock narrates his version of events surrounding his departure from the band and reflects on the early London punk scene, the involvement of Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, and the tensions that defined the group’s brief career.

20 November – Monk in Pieces

Directed by Billy Shebar and David C. Roberts, USA/Germany/France, 2025, 94 minutes
A film constructed around the career of Meredith Monk, American composer and interdisciplinary artist active since the 1960s. Interviews with figures including Björk and David Byrne appear alongside documentation of her performance practice, music-theatre works and later projects such as the opera ATLAS. The film also addresses the challenges of transmitting her work to new performers and directors.

Artist Information

Butthole Surfers formed in Texas in 1981. Their discography includes albums such as Psychic… Powerless… Another Man’s Sac (1984) and Independent Worm Saloon (1993). The group were associated with SST Records, Touch and Go, and later Capitol. Their most commercially successful single, Pepper, reached the US charts in 1996.

Coil was founded in London in 1982 by John Balance and Peter Christopherson. They were active in the experimental and industrial music scenes, collaborating with artists including Throbbing Gristle, Current 93, and Nine Inch Nails. Their releases include Horse Rotorvator (1986) and Musick to Play in the Dark (1999). Christopherson died in 2010 and Balance in 2004.

Glen Matlock (b. 1956) is an English musician and songwriter. He was bassist in the Sex Pistols from 1975 to 1977, co-writing most tracks on Never Mind the Bollocks. After leaving the group he formed Rich Kids with Midge Ure, and has worked with Iggy Pop, Primal Scream, and The Faces.

Meredith Monk (b. 1942) is a composer, singer and director based in New York. Since the 1960s she has created works spanning extended vocal technique, minimalism, film and interdisciplinary performance. She founded The House, a company for her music-theatre works, and has recorded extensively for ECM Records. Monk was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1995 and was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2021.

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